Energy spectra of neutrino-induced upward muons in underground experiments

One major goal of large underground detectors is to search for energetic neutrinos of astrophysical origin, for example, from point sources such as Cygnus X-3 or SN1987A. We investigate how the energies of the muons at the detector reflect the energies of the parent neutrinos. A measurement of the muon energy may help distinguish between a background of relatively-low-energy neutrinos of atmospheric origin and a signal from a point source if the latter has a hard neutrino spectrum, as expected in most models